


hello, my old heart

by sparxwrites



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Boss Fight, Character Study, Gen, Minor Injuries, Mute Frisk, Non-Gendered Frisk, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 06:59:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5238803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’ve seen this place before – the darkness around you, behind you, and the barrier ahead of you and speckled with the purple-blue of twilight. A dagger in your shaking hand, fingers curled around the well-worn hilt, fitting perfectly into the dips in the wood left over from long use. The locket, heavy around your neck, warm against your sternum like a second heartbeat to make up for the failing stutter of your own.</p><p>(In which Frisk prepares to fight Asgore, yet again, and the player is the only thing keeping them standing.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	hello, my old heart

**Author's Note:**

> __[hello](https://www.youtuberepeat.com/watch?v=rKNwx82kPjY), my old heart.  
>  how have you been?  
> are you still there inside my chest?

You’ve seen this place before – the darkness around you, behind you, and the barrier ahead of you and speckled with the purple-blue of twilight. A dagger in your shaking hand, fingers curled around the well-worn hilt, fitting perfectly into the dips in the wood left over from long use. The locket, heavy around your neck, warm against your sternum like a second heartbeat to make up for the failing stutter of your own.

“Human,” says Asgore, quietly, gently. His voice is low, a rumble you feel tucked somewhere beneath your ribs, and, for reasons you can’t quite understand, it feels like home – like warm blankets fresh out the dryer, and daisy chains, and butterscotch pie. “It was nice to meet you.” The smile on his face is small, somewhere between bittersweet and hopeless, but genuine. So genuine it _hurts_.

You look at that smile, and want to shout _wait_ , want to shout _it doesn’t have to be like this_ , want to shout _we don’t have to fight_. You’ve heard that same voice so many times before, as the world faded to black around you and your heart split on a fault line down the middle – urging you to not give up hope, to stay DETERMINED. You don’t like hearing it like this.

“Goodbye.”

The smile is gone, and the words are still stuck in your throat – your hollow, silent throat, and you’ve never wanted to scream as badly as you do right now.

His head lowers, chin dropping to his chest. After all this time, all these repeats, you can see the exact moment where the light leaves his eyes and he hardens himself against what must be done. He pulls out the trident from the folds of his cloak, gleamingly darkly red in the odd twilight, and you try not to flinch as he strikes.

No mercy left to save you, this time. The shattered remains of it scatter on the floor at your feet. It makes you ache, tired as you are.

And _oh_ , you are _so tired_. You’ve died so many times on the road to this place, save and load and save and load, over and over as they beat you black and blue. You crawled back to them every time, heart in your hands, soul bared, the cracks patched over as your fingers spelled out _mercy_ in the face of their weapons. Save and load and mercy, every time, for as long as it took.

You never thought you’d meet someone that didn’t want mercy. You never thought you’d meet someone that couldn’t afford to (didn’t think they _deserved_ to) accept your love.

The presence against your back, invisible hands on your shoulders that have guided you this far – and promise, somehow, silently, that they will guide you through this trial too – are all you have left now. Lips press a gentle kiss against your hair, a solid chest against the slumped curve of your spine, and it’s all that’s keeping you standing at this point.

It would be easier – so, so much easier – to just give up. To just drop to your knees and surrender, accept the inevitable, the strikes and swipes and endless waves of fireballs that always leave you on the floor no matter what you do. Death will come in the end, always comes, because there is nothing left for you to give and nothing else you can do, no options other than talking and dying. Save and load.

So much easier to save death the trouble of searching you out, and just give in to it.

The hand on your shoulder squeezes, ever so gently, as if sensing your despair. _Act_ , the presence whispers, silently, a single word you feel through your whole body. The familiarity of it, the simplicity of it, fills you with DETERMINATION.

You lock your knees, take a deep breath, and feel your shattered heart against your ribs as it beats out a frantic rhythm. _You’ve killed me_ , you say, hands stuttering through the signs clumsily, the knife shoved hastily in your pocket. _Too many times to count_.

He nods, pitifully – and despite the cloak, the trident, the armour, he looks so _small._ Smaller than you, even. Small and lost and alone. Even as he shifts the trident, conjures magic with a wave of his hand and aims it at you in a deadly attack… you can’t help thinking that, in that moment, he seems more of a child than you do.

Rings of fireballs come for you, from all sides, diagonal circles of flame in a seemingly random pattern. You weave through them as best you can, light on your feet like a dancer moving to a song that’s all-too-familiar – but not light enough. One clips you on the shoulder, and you stumble, mouth open in a soundless yell as the world flickers black.

When colour and sense return, you’re hunched, clutching at your shoulder. There’s a hole in your jumper, the soft wool of it singed at the edges and your skin burt livid red and tender beneath. You pull your hand away, sucking in a breath at cold air against the wound, and force your spine straight again despite the throbbing burn.

He still won’t look at you.

 _I don’t want to fight you_ , you sign slowly, gently. You don’t need the presence to tell you this – you know how this fight goes, how this scene plays out. God knows, you’ve lived it enough times that it’s burned a path into your brain, the same steps over and over.

His hands tremble.

It doesn’t stop the fireballs, though. They come in rings again, this time concentric circles with human-sized gaps, wave after wave of them closing in around you in a cage of fire. Familiarity does nothing to ease instinct, the raw animal fear of being trapped with pain bearing down on you from all sides.

You dodge through them as best you can with your heart in your throat like a frightened bird, fluttering, struggling to get out. The locket bounces against your chest with every dancing step, an echo of your heart a split-second out of time.

Eventually, the fireballs slow and stop. You do too, panting, your shoulder a fiery ache somewhere in your peripheral awareness. The adrenaline is like ice water in your veins, a more urgent concern, and your breathing stutters tight in your chest as you raise your hands once more. The knife in your pocket feels like it’s pressing a bruise into the skin of your hip, despite your attempts to ignore it.

 _I don’t want to fight you_. His eyes are on the floor, staring at his own feet for fear of meeting your eye and facing up to what he’s doing – but he can see your hands. He can see what you’re saying. You know it by the way he tenses, by the way his fingers tighten around the trident.

His breathing hitches in his throat, a hiccup of emotion.

The attack is easier to dodge, this time. There’s a gleam in his eye, blue orange blue, and you brace yourself. Stillness, movement, and then stillness again as he swipes three times. The movement is an explosion of energy, a mad dash sideways before you freeze – the world’s worst game of musical statues, you still and trembling and praying your shaking isn’t enough to trigger the searing pain that comes with movement.

It’s not, and when the trident stills again, your shoulders slump with relief. The rest of you is jittery, though, alive with energy and fear and a desperation to make this stop. To end this, once and for all.

 _STOP FIGHTING_ , you sign, movements wild and sloppy with desperation. It’s only warm, invisible hands around your wrists that keep you from saying more – _just stop, please, it doesn’t have to be like this, I don’t want your soul, please, just let this end_ -

He makes the mistake of looking up at your frantically waving hands, just the smallest flick of his eyes up from the cracked stone slabs of the floor. You meet his gaze, for the barest of seconds, and there’s something there – a flicker, bright and burning pain through the resignation and determination.

Recollection flashes in his eyes.

His attack is brutal. The individual fireballs hurt less, this time, but there are so _many_ of them, a lattice pattern of pain bearing down on you that seems unavoidable. You panic, frantic, try to dodge – but there are too many, and they drive you to the floor as the world flickers dark in the corners of your eyes, blurry though they are with tears. The cold of the stone is almost welcome after the burns, rough against your cheek as you lay there and gasp and tremble as the world turns to fire around you.

Hauling yourself to your feet takes more DETERMINATION than you thought you possessed. You pick yourself up off the floor, slowly, aching knees and skinned palms and heaving chest as you fight to remember how to breathe. You lock your knees again, straighten your spine, stand tall.

A part of you wonders why you bothered getting up at all.

 _Act_ , whispers the presence, again, something almost desperate to the words – as if they’ve come to the same realisation you have, know what you both must do but so desperately want to avoid. _Act!_

You raise your hands, ready to try again despite the rawness of them, blood beading across the abrasions. But he refuses to look at you. There’s no warning before he attacks, no time for you to get the words out and no reaction on his part to your attempts.

There’s simply a gleam of blue orange orange orange, and your feet seem to process it before your brain does. You freeze, anchored to the floor, and then dart from side to side through the orange light that slices you painlessly in half, braced at every moment for pain until the attack stops.

You’re left standing there, bruised knees and bloody palms and burn marks. In the silence, you feel the hands at your shoulders, the warmth and strength that’s always there, holding you up. Even through the pain, you feel it.

In the silence, you’re sure, he feels his sins, crawling on his back.

 _...Seems talking won’t do any more good_. You feel the weight of the words – you both do. The knowledge of what they mean. Everything you’ve worked against, everything you’ve denied, everything you’ve tried so hard to prove you’re not… and in the end, it still comes to this. Your shaking hands, your locked knees, your heart held together by duct tape and string after all the times it’s cracked in two.

A dagger in your hand that fits the shape of your fingers and the scraped-raw curve of your palm perfectly. Like it was made for you.

The presence at your back wraps arms around you, clutches you to their chest and presses their face against your hair. You can feel the apology in the action, the sorrow in every inch of them for what they’re asking you to do. Warm and invisible where they’re pressed against you, they’re somehow more real, in that moment, than even he is.

You straighten your spine. Curl your hand around the hilt of the dagger and squeeze, until your knuckles ache and your palm stings and you stop shaking. Watch Asgore, hunched and ashamed, so small for someone so big. He’s an easy target, too huge to miss – and, though you feel sick to your stomach at waiting for the perfect moment to strike, you also feel DETERMINATION. You know, now, what you have to do.

 _All I can do_ , you think, _is FIGHT._


End file.
